sudo does not allow me to run cp

Question

Executing the following command on a CentOS 5 box

sudo cp file1  file2

gives me the following error:

Sorry user my_username is not allowed to execute '/bin/cp file1 file2' as root on site_name.com

How can root access not be enough? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

How is your sudoers file set up? This command doesn't say that root can't cp, but instead you aren't allowed to use cp AS root.

You should have: my_username ALL=(ALL) ALL in the sudoers file

Answer 2

You might want to try running sudo -l, which will give you a listing of what permissions you have, according to the local sudo configuration. Eg: on my Macbook, I get:

: cez@rhk; sudo -l
Password:
Matching Defaults entries for cez on this host:
    env_reset, env_keep+=BLOCKSIZE, env_keep+="COLORFGBG COLORTERM", env_keep+=__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING,
    env_keep+="CHARSET LANG LANGUAGE LC_ALL LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE", env_keep+="LC_MESSAGES LC_MONETARY LC_NUMERIC
    LC_TIME", env_keep+="LINES COLUMNS", env_keep+=LSCOLORS, env_keep+=SSH_AUTH_SOCK, env_keep+=TZ,
    env_keep+="DISPLAY XAUTHORIZATION XAUTHORITY", env_keep+="EDITOR VISUAL"

User cez may run the following commands on this host:
    (ALL) ALL
: cez@rhk; 

The (ALL) ALL part means that my user can run any commands as any user (AFAICS).

Answer 3

sudo does not implicitly give you root access.

I would take a look in /etc/sudoers